On Sickness, Working Out, And Beauty
Just when one makes a good resolution, the world sets itself to kick said resolution right in the pants. I mean, it’s nothing really. This week was just the week I’d been working for months to get to, the five-day-a-week mark when it comes to working out. I was all set to do speed training.
Then along comes the dry arctic wind and the struggle to stay warm, plus the stress of weekend-before-last, and my body decides: Bitch, please. You are going to pour cranberry juice down like it’s going out of style, sleep for ten hours, and wake up with colored snot and body aches, not to mention a slight fever. You don’t like it? Tough. I’m the body, and what I say goes.
I knew, when I started coughing a bit last night, that something was up. So I went to bed early and slept like a log. Which means this morning the cold is still threatening, not actually doing anything new. That threat, however, is enough.
Yeah. So, I’m trying to battle the cough off. Which means no running today. I did manage to get the shovelgloving in, though. So today is not quite a total loss. But Jesus I feel like I’ve been run over.
Oh well. When I started this fitness thing I decided I was going to look at it this way: I am going to have to do exercise every weekday, one way or another, for the rest of my life. It is part of having a body, and I really really do not want to have someone else’s voice in my head, running my life and telling me I’m ugly. So, I can afford to be gentle with my body when it’s sick. It’s not like it’s going to matter when stacked against the years of me getting up and doing the workouts.
The seduction of this viewpoint is that I could start thinking a few days off doesn’t matter since I’m going to start up again “tomorrow”. Which is something I have to avoid like the plague. I get days off for injury, holiday, or sickness. Other than that, nada. See, I know my own capacity for procrastination. I do not want to go back to not working out. That felt awful.
Working out feels good. It took me decades to figure out what I wanted from working out, and to figure out the right set of reasons to do it, and to figure out that my body isn’t the enemy. It’s the friend that will be with me all my life, and I need to take care of my friends. They are, after all, very rare[1].
It’s hard when you’ve been taught your body is the ugly enemy all your life. It’s terribly hard to reclaim your own beauty. We’re told our bodies should be skinny like a preteen boy’s, hairless, poreless, meat in the service of the male norm. I know guys feel some pressure on their body images from media too, but women get the shorter end of the stick. (Because guys, you’re still the norm women are judged against. And you’re who we’re supposed to be hairless, poreless, skinny, virgin, and whore for all at once. And let’s not forget mother.)
Which is why I threw away the old bathroom scale we had out in the garage. I don’t want a single one of those things in my house fucking up my self-esteem or my daughter’s. I want her to know I’m working out because I want to be strong, not skinny. I don’t care if I’m pear-shaped all my life–but I’m going to be a strong pear shape. I’m going to be able to sledgehammer zombies, run hard and fast, and kick the ass of anyone who messes with me or my kids. This is what my working out is for–not so I can live up to some ideal that keeps changing, an “ideal” that is only meant to take the money from my pockets. (And at seventy-five cents to the dollar every male earns, I’ve got to be a lot more careful where my cash goes. And if you tell me that last twenty-five cents is because we get preggers and can’t work, I’ll just point out that when we get pregnant we’re continuing the human race and raising more consumers to keep the effing economy going. We deserve to get paid for that–or at the very least, not penalized. But that’s another blog post.)
I felt so liberated when I threw that scale out. I just wish I would have killed it with the sledgehammer first. HARD.
Reclaiming one’s beauty is a hard thing. Because we have so many voices who want to tell us we’re ugly and powerless, and we neeeeed them to fiiiiiix it by handing over money/power/sex/what-have-you. Those voices creep into my head and whisper that I’m ugly and worthless and need to be somehow fixed, and it’s hard to dispute them because they insidiously feel like my own thoughts after a while–because they’ve been repeated so often, from so many sources.
But they are not my own thoughts. They are damaging, toxic leftovers other people want me to think, for a variety of reasons. It serves the interests of a lot of people to make women’s bodies and minds their own worst enemies. Mothers don’t have to feel bad about their own wasted dreams if they pass on the damage, ad companies and diet companies and makeup companies and fashion companies get paid, toxic “friends” get a flush of ersatz self-confidence by putting other people down, predatory men[1] get victims, the self-help industry gets to make even more of a mint telling us what’s “wrong” with us. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Screw all that. I want my beauty back. I want my beauty and strength reclaimed. If it’s an uphill battle when I’m feeling sick or down, well, nothing worth having comes without hard work. I’ve learned that much by this age, at least.
But all that is a long-term thing. Today in the short term I’m nursing that cold and keeping the house warm. And reminding myself that my beauty–our beauty–is always there. We may forget it, but like the presence of the Divine it is intrinsic. It does not go away just because we cover it or forget it. It takes so little to honor it, to uncover and remember it. Just a very little bit of effort. So much of being ugly to each other is feeling ugly ourselves and striking out against it, when there’s no need. Taking the small effort to uncover and reclaim our own beauty can save us from being ugly to each other and to ourselves.
That’s a grand thing, and it’s worth spending that few moments every day on. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I have to blow my nose. That cold, she is preparing to kick my ass if I don’t drink more cranberry juice and take some rest.
Over and out.
[1] The word “friend” is bandied about a lot. It can mean acquaintance, buddy, person you know, or any number of things. Context is sometimes not sufficient to figure out which meaning–but that’s another blog post.
[2] Note I’m not saying all men. I’m saying PREDATORY men, and they’re out there. Don’t set up a straw man argument about how I hate men, mmkay? I like men. I gave birth to one, I’m raising two, and I’ve dated and married a few of them. There are predators among men as a whole–and a lot of opportunistic almost-predators get tipped over into ACTUAL predators because victims (of both genders) are so handy in our culture. If you DO choose to set up that straw man, be prepared to have your comment nuked without warning. Nuff said.
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December 16th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Amen, sister. At the encouragement of an older, (I thought) wiser woman friend, I just bought a scale two weeks ago. I had started working out in July and I never had a scale. I just knew that by November I’d seen visible changes and my fitness was up and I felt great about the progress. I was, however, very curious about where I was. I had an idea of where I had started so I thought I would finally be safe to check in. I was encouraged. I bought the scale. I stood on it. I spent the rest of the day eating cookies and spitting at the suggestion that this might be self-defeating.
I’ve had several women say, when I remark on my weight-lifting progress, something along the lines of “Well, you don’t want to start lifting too much.” I feel betrayed every time. Why the hell not? I’m never going to look like Schwarzenegger or probably even Jillian Michaels (though I’d be proud of that last). I’d have to start training professionally and live off egg white omlettes. Forget that. I’ll never forget, though, the struggle it was to get through five push ups the very first time. Let that be my scale from now on.
December 17th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Remember that muscle weighs more than fat. As you build muscle, you will appear to weigh more because you are actually converting fat to muscle…Stay away from the scale and don’t let ANYONE tell you what to do! Best Wishes!
December 17th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Lili, I <3 you. This is so absolutely true! I am small – not even 5′ – so I don’t weigh very much, but I’m horribly out of shape. I joined a gym at the start of November (and the world has conspired against me every time I try to go, ugh) – and was smacked down with “why do you need to go to the gym? you’re skinny!” WHA-? Because that’s the point here? I think not. Sure, right now I go just to battle holiday weight gain – that doesn’t help me get healthy – but ultimately it’s about being able to get the box of paper down off the top shelf in the office without having to ask somebody stronger than me. I especially love what you say about being ugly to each other.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I was thumbing through the catalog, instead of doing all that *schutff* that really needs to be finished, and saw this and thought of you:
http://www.signals.com/cgi-bin/hazel.cgi?randomizer=1024103424&action=detail&item=HE9702
My virtual present for the holidays,
Tami
ps: I’m totally not responsible for any spending that looking through their stuff may cause. ;^) I know I could easily go into debt.